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Ep. 18 Into The Mountain
154 Plays4 years ago
Having investigated the Commander's quarters and finding logs scribbled out outlining the final days of Fortress functions, our Swords must make the difficult decision of how to proceed. Is there enough information to bring back to Francine to give her the answers she seeks, or shall we venture further in.. Into the mountain?
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Transcript
00:00:13
Speaker
previously on the hired swords. Entering the bloodstained ruins of this mountain fortress, our heroes are due to face the very possible likelihood of Delmar's demise. As death and decay paint these halls, each of our heroes must come to terms with their own demons. Will this day end with a stain of another loss?
00:00:40
Speaker
With a loss of vips still lingering on the minds of each of our heroes, is this just another grave pyre awaiting the flame of grief? How will they tell, dear Francine?
Introduction to 'The Hired Swords'
00:01:20
Speaker
You're listening to the Hired Swords. This episode was recorded in front of a live studio audience. They're just really, really quiet.
Recap and Strategy Session
00:01:41
Speaker
Okay, so after a little bit of revelry and pep talking outside of the captain's quarters, where are you guys going to go next? We also was leaving, grabbing maps, and then got outside, and then yes, okay. Okay, okay. Just wanted to make sure we're all outside, I guess.
00:02:01
Speaker
Okay, so you're all outside of the captain's quarters. There are five other buildings including the Keep and a couple that you Krigs and really anybody can kind of identify as barracks. They're just kind of the longer rectangular buildings where it looks like people would
00:02:18
Speaker
multiple groups of people would be lodging in there based on the size and shape of it. There's several different buildings. To backtrack and also clarify, it's understood that Delmar
00:02:34
Speaker
likely faced this creature in his last moments, and that's what we know so far, correct? You know that he, as the head scout, he went into the keep to try to lure the monster in there. Perfect. Just wanted to make sure. And then, yeah, shortly after the captain went in to try to kill the monster after it had been trapped in the keep. Just a bit of a recap.
Mission Proposal and Trust Issues
00:03:02
Speaker
With everyone kind of assembled outside, Kriegs is gonna kind of take a stern look on his face and just a big sigh. Okay, here's what we have. This is the situation that presents us. We understand that Delmar likely met his fate inside that keep.
00:03:29
Speaker
We have no understanding of what this creature is, no understanding of what this creature is capable of, or no information as to whether it still resides in this keep. I've called on you to trust me before. Again, I'm gonna call on you once more. I need... I can't say need. I hope you can trust me now. It's my duty to Delmar
00:04:00
Speaker
I must enter that keep, and I would love to have you all by my side as friends and as, well, soldiers. Quindlin steps forward. I'll follow you. Davenall step forward too, just to kind of, not mock, but imitate the same thing she did. Give like a weird awkward salute and say like, you're our captain.
00:04:31
Speaker
Um, jocks here will just kind of laugh, walk past all of them and say, you, you said the keep, which one's the keep? Very cool. All right. All right. So you're going to head towards the keep lads. Let's go. And Craig's fishing for inspiration. Now he's got a scent of it.
00:04:59
Speaker
No, it was good, man. It was good. I feel like after 10 years, there's a very small chance that things still locked in there alive. It either escaped or it's dead. You're probably not wrong, but based on what we've read, they didn't understand it either. I'm not putting anything to chance. I have to believe it can still be in there. You make a good point.
00:05:23
Speaker
I agree, I don't feel like it's gone.
Approaching the Keep
00:05:31
Speaker
I think we'll know more once we get to the keep and we should probably inspect all the entrances and exits before we try to enter. Do we see anything of note really along the way?
00:05:46
Speaker
As you walk towards the Keep, you do see a few more very dilapidated, basically just skeletal groups of remains here and there. You see dead bodies strewn about here and there. Some of them seem to have been killed.
00:06:09
Speaker
a little, you know, killed violently. Some of them seem to have been killed, but with weapons, some torn apart, torn asunder, so to speak. But as you approach the keep, there is the one main door that is on the left side. The sheep is, the sheep, the sheep is shaped, the sheep is caped, like kind of like a triangle going into this, the walls of the mountain behind it with a
00:06:39
Speaker
a tower in the middle that at the top you can see has a place for folks to stand for defense. There are small arrow slit size windows along the front wall of the keep, but no doors. There's just the one entrance here. This is very obviously, Krigs to you, a defensible position that is supposed to be like the last stand if this fort were to come under attack. So there is just this one way in and out it seems.
00:07:07
Speaker
There you you have heard in the past of and you know of many of these forts have Tunnel situation at the backside of this of these keeps where you can get out through here there are also often dungeons in these keeps where criminals or Something like that is are kept so this could be this this could have any of those situations inside of the keep here and
00:07:31
Speaker
As we walk that way, Davin kind of looks
Past Haunts and Tactical Plans
00:07:34
Speaker
around it. The dead bodies on the ground in the scene that kind of looks like an actual battle, maybe like a war happened here. And it kind of reminds him a little bit of a moment in his past, and he just absentmindedly starts playing with the necklace around his neck. Yeah, okay.
00:07:50
Speaker
When you touch the necklace, you get a very uneasy feeling and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you just think back to what happened when you saw the fortune teller. Were you going to say something, Jockster?
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, so as we're walking up, I'm going to quickly jaunt kind of the, because it's like a boomerang shape, just along the edges to see if there's any broken walls or like other areas that might be big enough to at least get a body in or out if we wanted a quick way to escape or enter it differently.
00:08:30
Speaker
The outside walls are all pretty much intact. The windows are very small, like I said, arrow slit size, so there's nothing like that. Nothing seems to have been really damaged on the outside of this, so no, there's no entrance or exit space other than this main door, this one kind of front entrance. And then I'll run up to, I guess, the group heading up and
00:08:58
Speaker
OK, well, it's it's all in there or it's not. Well, we're not going to find out standing out here. I'm looking around and I'm looking for.
00:09:12
Speaker
tactical advantages I do see all the bodies out here which leads me to believe that outside not a great idea but at the same time close quarters inside a keep with who knows what also makes me very uncomfortable okay I know
00:09:33
Speaker
Having seen Joxer jump off the boar after grappling it, I know he's capable of interesting feats. I know that there are buildings and other vantage points that he could reach heights likely high enough to be able to get on roofs. I know Daven has range and I know Gwendolyn has
00:09:59
Speaker
excelled at her beast forms and can likely come up with something clever. So my initial tactical approach is likely going to be if it is in there trying to lure it out. In the process of doing so, use range as it exits the door and then see if we can make a stand outside
00:10:26
Speaker
That's just my first idea. I'm going to relay this to the group as we're approaching and kind of tell them all of the thoughts I have. When he mentions that, Jox is going to look up. How tall is that a forge or chimney? It's about 40 feet high.
00:10:52
Speaker
Okay, so probably about 10 or 15 feet to try to jump onto the roof and then climb up and then up. Yes. Okay. 15 feet up to the roof and then the remaining 35. Okay, so Jockster's gonna be like, well, as you mentioned, some of my feats, if we do end up thinking we're going inside, I could potentially lay a rope down the chimney there if that goes inside.
00:11:22
Speaker
Maybe that would be an easier way to escape. If it can't go through the doors, then it shouldn't be able to make it through there. What time of day is it right now?
Gwendolyn's Scouting Mission
00:11:35
Speaker
It's nighttime, full on dark nighttime. Full on darkness. I would... Krigs, do you mind if I turn into a mini scout and go into the building?
00:11:53
Speaker
That is a bold approach. I trust your discretion if you think you can get in and out being unseen and not put yourself at danger. That's not something I'm willing to risk, but I trust you. Now DM. Yes. Medium. I was about to say I turned to a giant wolf spider, but that's not what I do because that's pretty big. Okay. Maybe just like a mouse or something. Yeah.
00:12:22
Speaker
It's going to get arrows slit. Because because what I was thinking, I want to be able to have it had a bonus for stealth. That's why I wanted to pick it. I turned to a giant rat. Okay. Giant rat. They're small beasts. They're small. Okay. Okay. So where are you heading to try to get in the building?
00:12:46
Speaker
Where that doorway is in the entrance, I'm going to look for little cracks around it to see if I can wiggle through it. If not, I want to try to find a way through the bricks or the stone. You can try to slide in underneath the door, but when you do, it's very clear that there is stone and rubble in front of this door on the other side of it. Can I make my way through it?
00:13:17
Speaker
There are no spaces. It's packed, piled up there. You could try to kind of dig your way through, but you quickly realize that there's a lot of stone piled up on the other side of this door.
00:13:34
Speaker
I'm going to crawl back out because before I say anything, I want to check on the sides of the walls. I guess it sounds structure, isn't it? So I'm not going to find anything. There are. It is a very sound structure. You do see the arrow slits, though, that are like window windows. They're about
00:13:50
Speaker
you know, five and a half feet up from the floor. They're only about eight inches wide all the way across and about two feet long. So they're just places where they can shoot a narrow through there. So, but I believe that your small rat large, your giant for a rat, it's still a small creature could fit through there. Okay, I want to try to do that. Okay.
00:14:16
Speaker
So you can squeeze through there and you squeeze through and fall down about five feet to the ground where you are in a large, mostly empty room. There's a door.
00:14:32
Speaker
in the center of a far wall, far away from you. You see two walls, it's a rectangular room, a wall on each side with three lanterns on each wall hanging on it. There are, and make an investigation check besides that, as a rat with rat information. We're also going to introduce a new mechanic. Nine plus two, 11.
00:15:04
Speaker
You just see little bits of blood or not little bits. You see blood scattered about the floor in this room and you have entered a new room and you have entered the keep. We have added a D6 to something I will describe briefly to our listeners that I have kind of gone over some of the stuff and let the players answer, ask questions about
00:15:33
Speaker
But we're implementing a D6 tension dice system that I found on Angry DM, the blog, Angry DM. I don't know if it's angrydm.com. I think it's something weird like a blog spot or WordPress site, but you can Google Angry DM and you'll find it.
00:15:54
Speaker
And anyway, the way it works is there are certain actions that cause me to add a D6 die to a pool of dice.
00:16:04
Speaker
Some actions cause me to add a d6 die to the pool and then roll whatever's there I also roll every time the pool gets to six and then it goes back down to zero after I roll it every one that comes up on any of the d6 is Causes them to have to causes our players to have to make a save or something to happen something crazy and at that point It will what will reveal what those things are
00:16:34
Speaker
and it's going to get more and more difficult every time a one is rolled. The difficulty class for those saves will go up every time a one is rolled.
Introducing Tension Dice Mechanics
00:16:42
Speaker
So we have just added the first D6 to this pool because the room was entered. So you see this blood on the floor. You also... Well, let's see. I'll see if you do or not.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, you also hear in the in the down coming from behind that door. It sounds like it's a ways off. You hear a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It sounds like very large footfalls. Very large.
00:17:18
Speaker
Can I, giant rats have keen smell, which gives them advantage on wisdom, perception checks. Can I differentiate the smells? Like, can I separate it and see if I can make a check with that advantage? I'll let you do another perception check. 16 plus.
00:17:42
Speaker
zero. Okay. Yeah, you you can smell the most overwhelming smell is the smell of rotted corpse and meat in and by meat, I mean flesh, right? So you smell that almost overwhelming. You also smell just a stench of sour something just sour and foul smelling.
00:18:10
Speaker
And then there's the the must of the stone and the mountains and that's there too. But the overwhelming smell is the rotting flesh. The other smell that stands out to you is that just sour stink of something. Can I tell where the stink is coming from?
00:18:32
Speaker
I imagine I'm towards the front, near the door. Where the arrow... It is permeating this space that you don't know where it comes from. It's just everywhere. Almost overwhelming. Gets out. Because she can't. Okay. It don't smell.
00:18:50
Speaker
uh i i go back through the the arrow hole and i transform back and pick up my cape from the ground and as i'm putting it on my eyes are wide and i just stare at the ground there's something in there but besides man flesh there i there's a smell that is
00:19:20
Speaker
Did you get a—did you see what it was? No. It was—there were steps. And I looked, daven in the eyes. It—it's in there. Craig's, what do you think we should do?
Creature's Survival and Risks
00:19:37
Speaker
Did you have anything—did you notice anything from the room? I know you, uh, attempted to go through the front door, or at least the door there.
00:19:48
Speaker
it. The door seems blocked. I couldn't even make my way through. That's why I came back out and went through that tiny hole. I want to- Does it seem stuck in this keep? I think so.
00:20:08
Speaker
All right, let's go home. Bye. I understand that theory there, Craig, the idea of just leaving it here if it's stuck, but sooner or later, someone's going to come through here without the knowledge that we have. They might open up that door and this thing could get out. I don't think we can leave it like this. We need to see what it truly is.
00:20:34
Speaker
I believe you're right. So at this point, after hearing this, Joxer is just going to be like the maps and then try to light a torch because it's getting dark and try to pull out the maps and try to decide if there's another way into this keep.
00:20:55
Speaker
Okay. You pull out your maps, you take a look, make an investigation check as you look at the maps. Okay. Because right now I only know that that chimney might make it. Uh, 18 minus one. So 17.
00:21:09
Speaker
Okay, yeah, as you're looking through the maps, the main map is just the area. There's no details about the buildings. You do see a couple of roughly drawn maps of the buildings that are here. There's a couple of the barracks. They look like some of the builder's drawings, and you definitely find one of the keep. You can see where they've scribbled out the door as if to mark it as not an option. We're going to scribble out and shut off this entrance.
00:21:38
Speaker
And they've put a circle on the chimney and put an X next to the chimney where you can see that they've drawn that there's a walkway around the outside of this chimney area. And that walkway, they've put another little circle inside there. This is the spot right here.
00:21:58
Speaker
Everybody, everybody, here, these maps, it looks like there's an actual walkway in from the chimney. Obviously, you notice the front doors enclosed, but there had to be another way for the previous captain to get in. So we need to get down the roof. I'm starting to understand why these men fell that day.
00:22:30
Speaker
Planning seems off. I can't understand why they would want to be in such closed quarters with this beast. I less think it is that they wanted to be in closed quarters, but how quickly it might escape if it's not in closed quarters. I understand. Maybe... I don't understand how it hasn't escaped.
00:22:58
Speaker
After 10 years, it's still alive, but it still hasn't gotten out. Maybe it's big. You can't fit through the doors locked, but maybe it's even not smart enough? Or I just... I don't know.
00:23:20
Speaker
But does does not need food. I mean, I understand there might have been men in there that he could have eaten on, but for 10 years. I mean, if there's a smell, then there's still some flesh. That's true. Hibernation is a thing that that some creatures do even longer than most. I can I can see that it possibly hibernated. Krigs, can I get up on your shoulders, see if I get up on that roof?
00:23:49
Speaker
Absolutely. Check them. It's three feet taller. Every three feet counts. Congrats. Now you're at six foot five. I'm going to see if there's some way that I can get up there. Okay. You actually could kind of put your foot up in the foothold. Use one of the arrow slots as a foothold and get a little higher and reach up.
00:24:18
Speaker
And you only have to climb the stones there on the outside of the building for about 10 more feet to get up to the ledge where you could get on the roof. So if you want to make an athletics or acrobatics check, probably acrobatics in your case to get up there, you can do so. I do. And it's not great. It's an eight.
00:24:38
Speaker
Okay. Your, your, your foot hold once you leave the, once your foot leaves the, um, arrow slots, you're really not able to get your foot down on a, a good spot to keep climbing. And so you're kind of trying to walk up to assist and then holds his hand up so he could step on it.
00:25:02
Speaker
Okay, so he lets you hold his hand. So go ahead and make a second roll. We'll call it your advantage roll with help from Joxer. So am I rolling again or rolling two? Just roll it again. No, just roll one more time and see. It's much worse. Oh no.
00:25:18
Speaker
You like jocks walk up. Yeah, jocks are walks up with his hand up and tries to help you and you you step on it and he's holding his hand up and you're on it and it just keeps getting wobbly because you're just not getting your center of the balance proper and jocks are like just just center yourself center yourself and you're like, I'm trying I'm trying you know, and you're just struggling to get I just hop back down to the ground level.
00:25:42
Speaker
I say, okay, maybe it's not my job to get up there. I pull out a rope. I say somebody, maybe a little bit more talents can get up there and help pull us up. I'm just going to grab the rope and then, uh, and just jump. That's, I don't even think I have to roll, but I'll do it. It's okay. Yeah. What's your, you can jump how high? Like, Oh, I can do twice my, my jump. So it's like, yeah. Yeah. It's like half my.
00:26:07
Speaker
So without moving, I don't remember, but it's like twice the normal. Yeah. Hello, it's me, Ash. And I want to get on here and do some promoting. You know, every player and every DM needs their dice and they need it to look rad and awesome. Well, I think I know the gal. You'd check her out on Twitter at stirbuck, AKA Plantomancer.
00:26:35
Speaker
and she has a cool website called arcaneflora.com where she makes super radical dice and awesome resin projects that she's always posting about on twitter so instead of sending that stimulus check at something at target
00:26:50
Speaker
I think you'd want to spend it here at arcaneflora.com Again, you can find her on Twitter as plantomancer at stirbuck, S-T-R-R-B-U-C-K She's always posting new projects that she's gonna do and wanting to know what the consumers like you would want
00:27:08
Speaker
in a new set of dice and also thank you for listening to the hired swords it means a lot to not only me but to the whole crew as well um much appreciation i am overfilled with so much love and great vibes from everyone in the ttrpg community and our listeners means a lot um the only way that we self-promote is via word of mouth and on
00:27:35
Speaker
the interwebs. You can follow us at the hiredswords.com or you can follow us at the hiredswords on Twitter and Facebook. I hope you beautiful people have a wonderful day over and out. You jump up and land on the edge of the roof up there without any problems and have that rope and then you can walk up to the tip top like the
00:28:04
Speaker
ridge up there of the roof and then make another hop up and you land on the the walkway around the outside of this chimney with that has more stone kind of bits that stick up that again is another defensible area up here and so you have the rope in hand and you're standing up there on top of this this kind of chimney guard tower combination tower here.
00:28:28
Speaker
So I'll probably try to tie the rope to the short sword that I have as kind of like a way to stabilize it and then wrap it around the chimney and then drop it down. Okay. So you successfully are able to tie it off, then drop it down. You're dropping it down the outside of the building?
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, for others. And we're adding another of these suspense dice. Because we add one every 10 minutes. Every 10 in-game minutes. So you are now up to two of those.
Rooftop Discovery and Time Constraints
00:29:13
Speaker
So the rope falls down and once the rope has fallen down, everyone else can take their time. If they'd like, take their turns getting up the rope. I will climb up.
00:29:25
Speaker
Okay. So after Davin's attempt to climb and then everyone else climbing and spending a good 15 or so minutes out here, getting everybody up, you're finally all up to that, to the, this walkway. And you just walk over to one of the corners of the, the chimney walkway up there. And there is a, a hatch to, to go that opens in the floor. That is, that is there sitting on the floor in the walkway up there.
00:29:53
Speaker
I guess that works. Yeah. Okay. If you open that hatch, there's a ladder footholds carved into the stone all the way down from here. The latch that you climbed in, it's pretty small.
00:30:11
Speaker
Like, Krig, you kind of have to find yourself the right angle to wiggle down this hole in this floor. This is where the archers would climb up to get into this tower. You find your way down into this same room that Gwendolyn was in, which is this
00:30:34
Speaker
Very pretty large antechamber that I described to her as having the bloodstains all over and If anyone who would like to learn anymore is welcome to make an investigation check We're still outside, right? Like not actually in that room or we did we make it all the way down down is in that room I'll say I climbed down there. Yeah, I climbed down. I'm gonna let them go without me. I probably went first. Yeah, jocks are investigate
00:31:03
Speaker
And that's a 1718. All right. This room is pretty empty. Like I said, as you walk around and look around, you can see that the the
00:31:23
Speaker
All the every stone column and everything that can that could be removed from this room is piled up against
00:31:34
Speaker
where the door would be. And it just looks like a wall of stuff. Like there's just not a door here. It doesn't look like even they piled something against a door. It looks like this room is just full of stuff where you can't see a door unless you knew from the other side that there was one here. You guys would be able to piece that together, but you get the idea that some big dumb creature may not be able to figure that out.
00:32:00
Speaker
And the rest of the room is blood here blood there. I mean, it's just kind of everywhere dried again very almost a part of the stone but With your high the high investigation rolls. You can see that there is blood drag marks Dragging out the door out of this room through the door at the back of this room There's one door back there
00:32:27
Speaker
the, but there's no bodies in this room at all. There are no bodies in this room. Even though I smelled it. Right. Weird. The room smells like rotted meat and flesh, but there's no bodies in this room. From those drag marks, would I be able to get a mild thought as to how large this beast might be? By the drag marks?
00:32:53
Speaker
You can see that there, you can't really get a sense of how large the beast would be. You can see, would you roll a 17? You can see that it seems like it was, it's hard to know for sure, but it dragged multiple bodies out of this room, whether it was all at the same time or separate times you don't know, but there have
00:33:20
Speaker
Everywhere there's a pool of blood, there's a drag mark from that pool through that door. It looks like all the bodies have gone and I'll point in that direction. I'll assume I have turned or lit a torch that I brought in the torch that I lit earlier and just point to that back door. I mean, we didn't come this way just to turn around and leave, did we?
00:33:49
Speaker
Nope. Would there is the amount of stuff that's covering the actual door itself. Uh, I have to assume it would be completely non advantageous to try and like move any of it.
00:34:05
Speaker
I mean, you could definitely spend time moving everything around if you'd like. I don't know that I want to spend that and add up more. It seems like it would take some time. The time you've taken investigating this room and everything has added another 10 minutes to this adventure.
Exploring the Keep's Antechamber
00:34:20
Speaker
So you were at three of these dice, three dice. Yeah, I think moving all the stuff in front of the door is just going to get us into trouble. Sure enough. Are there any this is how large is this room that we are in?
00:34:36
Speaker
The room you were in is pretty large. It's the width of this building. So it's about 40 feet, but it is at a little bit of an angle. So this front entryway is the width of the building, though. So it's a pretty good size building. Pretty good size room. And you hear, as you're standing there,
00:35:04
Speaker
what Gwendolyn heard before, you hear a, and it's very, it seems very distant right now, but just a, and some of some dust and like little bits of stone kind of fall in the ceiling, kind of shaking of the space.
00:35:21
Speaker
Understanding the orientation of the building and the size of the building, getting an idea of the size of this room, can I more or less ascertain if this is the largest room in the building? I'm going to say it's dwarven structure. I'm a dwarf. I also understand the history of stonework. Is this the biggest room?
00:35:45
Speaker
It seems like it is. Uh, and in fact, it seems like it's almost, it's, it's a little, either there's not much more building or it's built into the mountain in some way, carved into the mountain through here. Great. One of the, one or the other, it's either this is about it. It's all there is to this, or there's a little bit of, uh, Dwarven, uh, carving out through into the, into the mountain here. That sounds like it's coming from below us a little bit. I have a feeling that we're going to be going down some stairs.
00:36:15
Speaker
I don't think you're wrong. Krigs, didn't you say that sometimes they have like dungeon areas back here? They have dungeons. They have tunnels. They build these into mountains. They build them into the literal earth itself. You can't put much past these dwarves. Uh, we, we get a little ambitious. Uh, it's safe to say opening this door, there's no turning back point. You are sure all of you,
00:36:43
Speaker
Uh, we are in this together. You can still turn back. We can still leave this here. We do not have to go forward. We have answers for our friend, but we don't have anything of her father. I don't have answers. All right. That said, I need to take count. Chucks, or how many brews do you have left?
00:37:12
Speaker
I use the maul to revive you, but I do have two potions. Yeah, two healing potions. Nothing in your little hidey hole, I presume. Nothing. Just water at this point. Shame. Those are quite flammable. You have a potent stout. Yes.
00:37:43
Speaker
That's an option out. If we knew the size of the beast, we could almost trap it in it. But gathering from the trouble they seem to have had, it might be a little more agile than falling in a hole. It sounds quite large to me. Based on the sounds we've heard thus far, I would say, indeed, it is likely going to have some weight to it.
00:38:12
Speaker
Um, I guess the best we can do now, push forward, take every step with care. Uh, if you're ready, facing yourself and I'm going to approach the door. Devin claps his hands together and starts rubbing him. And when he does, you start, they just kind of spark a little bit. He's like, let's do this. Gwen reaches in her bag just to feel Dale for comfort and strength.
00:38:40
Speaker
I'll hold the torch as high as I can and help help light the way behind me. And I'm going to open the door. Oh, don't do that. Don't add another die. It's OK, it's only at four. Yeah. Yeah, no biggie.
00:39:08
Speaker
So he doesn't roll them until it gets to 5,000. So we have added that fourth D6 to the tension pool. You walk into this room, and it is, again, very large, not as large as the one you just left, but pretty good sized. The back, the room is, the floor is nicely hewn stone in most of the walls, but the back wall looks like a carved mountainside stone walls.
00:39:37
Speaker
And the floors in here are covered in blood. There are bodies strewn about all over the place. Most of them look mauled to death. I mean, you can tell their bones crushed, things like that. Not much flesh left on much of them. Some of them are in a pile in the corner. Some of them are just strewn about here and there. This room has tables and chairs.
00:40:06
Speaker
Some of the tables are destroyed and some of the chairs are torn up. This was like a mess hall. There's a back door in the back of the room and it's just hanging open barely from a hinge and there is another door just beyond.
00:40:29
Speaker
to the to on the other side on the same wall sorry carved into the back stone mountainside wall is another door one is kind of over on the crafted wall and it's hanging that's the one that the door is kind of hanging loose
00:40:45
Speaker
The other one is just a doorway, a large double wide doorway entrance to a hall beyond straight ahead from where you're looking. The other one is on the side over here where there's another door hanging from the hinge, like I said. Devin looks back and forth between the two entrances. He says, I have no memory of this. No, nobody? Okay.
00:41:14
Speaker
So the door that's hanging that's leading to a room, the door, I'm assuming open enough that we can determine that it's not in there, correct? The door that is hanging open, like the actual has a door on it or the one that's just like an entryway doorway? Maybe I misunderstood. The one that had the hanging door, where does that
00:41:38
Speaker
That is over to your right-hand side, and it goes through some of the crafted stone wall. Then ahead of you is a carved entryway into some sort of tunnel beyond there. Well, they said they were doing mining. We never saw any places outside. Is it possible they built the building around the mining site? That is fairly typical for dwarves. It makes
00:42:05
Speaker
Entry and exit into the mine, a relatively easy process if there's no weathering or anything to have to contend with. So this thing is not locked in the building, it's down on the mines. That would be my assumption at this point, yes. If it's below us, let's check this other room first. In that entry. Uh-huh.
00:42:30
Speaker
Sorry, if you can hear the click clacks of the dog behind you and the entry straight ahead from you, like that, the, the entryway, it's kind of like an archway entryway. So you can say the archway or the doorway either way. Uh, no, in the, in the, the first room in the journal entry, how many minors, uh, did it say were left in the end?
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, after the scout lured the thing. It was eight workmen. No, yeah, eight workmen, one enlisted officer, no scouts and one commissioned officer. 21 had been killed and nine missing. No, hang on. It was three workmen left, eight enlisted soldiers, one officer, no scouts, one commissioned officer. And it didn't say whether or not that these people were possibly in the mines.
00:43:20
Speaker
total of 13 people that were still left and that lasted. If I try and do a rough count of how many bodies have been dragged through here, how many do I come up with? More than 13. It's hard to know for sure the number because some of them are in bits and pieces, but you count at least 15 heads alone. They've lost a lot of men along the way. I'm sure it all happened mostly in this room.
00:43:49
Speaker
The thing must've come up through that tunnel and attacked them. That must've been where it came from originally.
00:43:59
Speaker
a person last in the mines. Davin, your accent is a bit deep. It's hard. I've been trying all night trying to copy it. Excellent. We're all going to be terrible Irish accents by the end of this session. How long have you been after me, Lucky Char? How long have you been after me, Lucky Char? The name's Kraken. Where'd that darn rainbow go?
00:44:27
Speaker
Chris O'Connor. Sorry to anyone from Ireland who may or may not have listened to this podcast. Yeah, for real. It's kind of British. And so I move my mic and try to do a British saying before I have to talk so that way I can get in the character. I like it. You mute your mic and cheerio. All right, I'm ready.
00:44:58
Speaker
Do you think that someone could live in the mines? I find that relatively unlikely, at least for the amount of time between the logs we found and now. I mean, there are some nutrients that can be found within the mine shafts, depending on how
00:45:21
Speaker
wanting you find yourself. And the last date was 11 years ago? That's correct.
00:45:33
Speaker
And you're at five. Yeah. Are we still hearing the sounds? You haven't heard it. I'll check now. Six. Yes. You're hearing it again just now. I just don't know if conversation's going to help this moment. Do the sounds sound like they're getting closer? Not yet. Not at this point. Not yet. I don't like that.
00:45:59
Speaker
DM, did you say you roam at five or six days? At six days. Okay. Uh, yeah, we might want to get ourselves moving, sitting here and just talking about it. It's not really going to help anything. What's, uh, jocks, are you standing near that door? What's near what's in that other room? That's off the hinges.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, Jackson is going to at this point assume there's no traps, assuming that the monster set off whatever might be here and just open the door and see what's in there. OK, inside that door, it's it's there's a little kitchen area. It's a rectangular room just about 20 foot by 40.
00:46:34
Speaker
There's two cooking furnaces that sit on the floor at one end of the room. There's a table against the long wall across the doorway and there are some shelving hanging on the wall above the table and the cooking area with some, there's like teapots and things like that here and there and little like,
00:46:54
Speaker
clay pots and stuff also. It looks like a kitchen. I'm not seeing anything off the cuff, but there is a table. We might be able to use it to barricade something, but we'd have to investigate to find some spirits. Let me jump in there and make a quick check.
00:47:20
Speaker
Check in there. Are you just going to check the room or look at anything in particular? Start with just checking the the room to see if there's anything flammable other than wood. Like combustible and then wow. 18 minus one again. 17 today. So looking around, you don't you just kind of look in
00:47:43
Speaker
throughout the room and not really digging anything specifically. You don't come across anything other than just some rotten food here and there, small bags of rations and things that have, you know, they got maggots crawling through them and stuff, but nothing really of use, it doesn't seem.
00:48:04
Speaker
While he's looking through there, Daven wants to go over to the archway that would lead down into the mountain and just kind of peer through and see how far I can see with human eyes. OK, you can see that it walks about 10 feet straight ahead and then starts to dip down, maybe a stairway, maybe just like ramps down. You're not sure.
00:48:25
Speaker
But you definitely see it go down from there about 10 feet out. And then you can't see much because of the grade there going downwards. It's more scary from here. I'm going to go for the cupboards after yelling. There's nothing immediate. Make another investigation check.
Scavenging the Kitchen
00:48:44
Speaker
That's a 12.
00:48:47
Speaker
Okay, digging through, you just find some actual little baggies of dried spices. You can kind of smell them and they smell pretty good. Actually, a few of them do. And these being dried spices like this, they don't really have a expiration, these kinds of things.
00:49:06
Speaker
being and being kind of sealed up in these clay pots you've been looking through in the cupboards. You get the sense that these may still be useful or at least sellable if not use if you don't want to use them. I'll take the spices and yell out. I don't I don't think there's any anything flammable other than wood in here. And pans if you want pans if you want to beat it to death, it's there. Right? Yeah. I guess we'll carry on. Okay.
00:49:35
Speaker
I'm going to approach what looks to be the decline and see what I can see.
00:49:41
Speaker
All right, so as you look down, you see a stairway that kind of goes down about 30 steps down to where the ground levels off.
Descent into the Mines and Rising Tension
00:49:51
Speaker
And it is at this point now that the stairs are mostly carved out of the earth, carved down out of the stone. And it just goes down, down, down. Like I said, 30 steps, it's total about 20 feet walking down all the steps to get down there.
00:50:07
Speaker
And the tunnel stays about seven foot tall, about 10 foot wide, and at this point here. So you're able to walk around in here pretty simply. You for sure, Krigs, but everyone else can fit in there pretty easy too. Cool. What do we find like down beyond that point? If you go on down, we're going to
00:50:35
Speaker
If you add another dice at our six, then we're going to roll. But the good news is it clears you back to. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's great news. Here comes six ones. Indiana Jones, just we're just going to try. Snakes at the bottom.
00:50:59
Speaker
A bowler filled with snakes. I need, I need everyone to roll a wisdom saving throw. Okay. All right. Oh yes. 11 plus. Daven has a 15 total. I have a 12 total.
00:51:26
Speaker
18 plus seven. Oh my gosh, guys.
00:51:33
Speaker
So, nine. Nine, okay. So, Krigs, I need you to roll a D100 for me. So roll the two D10s for me. And suddenly, you hear that sound again. When dust falls from the ceiling and you suddenly see
00:51:59
Speaker
the worst memories you've ever had of combat and war and bodies, and some of this stuff has given you some really bad, really bad, some really bad memories, some of this stuff you're seeing here. So on your 100, you rolled a 49.
00:52:16
Speaker
Okay, so you start just babbling and just speaking uncontrollably, just saying random things, just like, okay, we got this guys, we could do this, we're gonna make our way through this place and we're going to be fine, don't worry everybody, but you can't control what you say and you can't cast any spells because you can't control what you say for the next 30 minutes. Ha!
00:52:47
Speaker
what that wasn't me that's three uh three dice just so you know 30 minutes okay well at least three days uh 10 minutes i'm useless now i'm just kidding you had to beat it in
00:53:04
Speaker
Okay. And you rolled a nine. That was the lowest wisdom saving throw difficulty you're going to have, because every time I have to roll, it goes up one. Of course it does. So that's fun. Okay. Lingering is not a good idea. Oh my gosh. You know, at what point does this treatment from our DM actually become cruel and unusual punishment?
00:53:33
Speaker
Well, maybe not cruel, but certainly unusual.